"He would not deceive you, my child! If you knew him as well as I do, if you could realize all that he was before his tender, loving heart was stabbed by the two whom he almost adored, you would judge him more leniently. Edna, if I whom he has robbed of all that made life beautiful--if I, standing here in my lonely old age, in sight of the graves of my murdered darlings--if I can forgive him, and pray for him, and, as God is my witness, love him! you have no right to visit my injuries and my sorrows upon him!" Edna looked in amazement at his troubled earnest countenance, and exclaimed: "Oh! if he knew all your noble charity, your unparalleled magnanimity, surely, surely, your influence would be his salvation! His stubborn, bitter heart would be melted. But, sir, I should have a right to expect Annie's sad fate if I could forget her sufferings and her wrongs." Mr. Hammond rose and walked to the window, and after a time, when he resumed his seat, his eyes were full of tears, and his wrinkled face was strangely pallid. "My darling Annie, my sweet, fragile flower, my precious little daughter, so like her sainted mother! Ah! it is not surprising that she could not resist his fascinations. But, Edna, he never loved my pet lamb. Do you know that you have become almost as dear to me as my own dead child? She deceived me! she was willing to forsake her father in his old age; but through long years you have never once betrayed my perfect confidence." The old man put his thin hand on the orphan's head and turned the countenance toward him. "My dear little girl, you will not think me impertinently curious when I ask you a question, which my sincere affection for and interest in you certainly sanction? Do you love St. Elmo?" "Mr. Hammond, it is not love; for esteem, respect, confidence, belong to love. But I can not deny that he exerts a very singular, a wicked fascination over me. I dread his evil influence, I avoid his presence, and know that he is utterly unworthy of any woman's trust; and yet--and yet--Oh, sir! I feel that I am very weak, and I fear that I am unwomanly; but I can not despise, I can not hate him as I ought to do!" "Is not this feeling on your part one of the causes that hurry you away to New York?" "That is certainly one of the reasons why I am anxious to go away as early as possible. Oh, Mr. Hammond! much as I love, much as I owe you and Mrs. Murray, I sometimes wish that I had never come here! Never seen Le Bocage, and the mocking, jeering man who owns it!" "Try to believe that somehow in the mysterious Divine economy it is all for the best. In reviewing the apparently accidental circumstances that placed you among us, I have thought that, because this was your appointed field of labor, God in his wisdom brought you where he designed you to work. Does Mrs. Murray know that her son offered to make you his wife?"